Twenty physicians bled the Duke of Penrith for three months and called it “bad blood.” But a poor maid earning only a few shillings a week scrubbing floors discovered a poisoned green stitch hidden in his collar — revealing the chilling truth that not a single doctor had seen.

 PART 5

The next six days were a masterclass in deception.

By day, Penri Manor was a tomb preparing to receive its master. The curtains were drawn. The servants wore black armbands. Dr. Lipton made twice-daily appearances, pronounced the Duke entirely beyond hope, collected his fee, and left.

By night, the Duke’s bedchamber transformed into a clandestine rationing station.

Norah stole whatever she could. Boiled eggs slipped into her bodice. Salted beef wrapped in wax paper and shoved down her stockings. Clean water smuggled in the heavy copper warming pans. Alistair ate like a starving wolf — the aristocratic refinement entirely gone. He tore into cold bread with his bare hands, chewing aggressively in the dark.

The arsenic was slowly leaving his system. But the damage was profound. His muscles had atrophied. His balance was gone.

On the seventh night, Norah forced him out of bed.

“Stand up,” she ordered, dumping a pile of heavily soiled linens onto the floor.

Alistair looked at her from the mattress, his eyes shadowed in the candlelight. “I cannot walk.”

“Then crawl. But if you lie in that bed for another week, your lungs will fill with fluid, and you’ll die of pneumonia anyway. Up.”

He scowled — a flash of the old imperious duke flaring in his features. “You overstep your station, Norah.”

“My station is keeping you alive. Your station is currently corpse. Get out of the bed.”

He ground his teeth. But he swung his legs over the edge of the mattress. His feet touched the cold oak floor. He pushed himself up — and his legs buckled instantly.

Norah caught him before he hit the ground.

He was heavy, even starved as he was, and she grunted under his weight. Her shoulder slammed against his chest; her hands gripped the rough fabric of his nightshirt. He smelled of sweat and copper, and his breath hitched in pain by her ear.

“I have you,” she grunted, wrapping his arm over her shoulders. “Put your weight on me.”

“I’m crushing you,” he ground out, his face pale with humiliation.

“I’ve carried heavier buckets of coal. Move your left foot.”

They paced the length of the room.

It took them ten minutes to walk twenty feet.

Alistair’s breathing was harsh and ragged, sweat pouring down his face. He leaned heavily against Norah, his pride breaking a little more with every trembling step. He had commanded armies in Spain. He owned half of Yorkshire.

And he could not cross his own bedroom without clinging to a chambermaid.

When they finally made it to the armchair by the fire, he collapsed into it, gasping for air. Norah poured him a cup of stolen water.

She did not look at him with pity. She just handed him the cup and began stripping the bed of its sour sheets.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked suddenly.

The harshness in his voice was gone, replaced by a raw, exhausted curiosity.

“You risk the noose every time you steal a loaf of bread. You could have walked away.”

Norah paused with a crumpled sheet in her hands. She looked at the fire.

“I had a brother. Tommy.”

Alistair remained silent, listening.

“He worked in the textile mills in Manchester,” Norah said, her voice devoid of emotion — a flat recitation of facts. “He caught a fever. A simple, stupid fever. The mill owner wouldn’t let him go home. Said if he stopped the loom, he’d dock his pay for the week. Tommy stayed. He collapsed into the machinery. It crushed his chest.”

She threw the sheet into the laundry basket with a sharp, angry motion.

“The men in charge don’t care about the blood on the gears, so long as the loom keeps running. Edward is no different from the mill owner. You are just a broken gear to him. He’ll toss you out and take the wealth you built.”

She looked at Alistair, her eyes hard and bright.

“I couldn’t save Tommy. But I can ruin Edward. And keeping you breathing is the best way to do it.”

Alistair looked at her for a long time. The flickering firelight caught the sharp angles of his face.

Slowly, he lifted his cup of water in a silent toast.

“To ruining Edward,” he murmured.

The truce was forged. It was not built on affection. It was built on a shared, cynical hatred of men who treated lives like ledger entries.

But the truce was fragile.

And time was running out.

The following afternoon, Norah was polishing the brass balusters on the second-floor landing.

It was tedious work, but it placed her directly above the open double doors of the library. She scrubbed the metal rhythmically, her ears trained on the voices drifting up from below.

“He defies medical science,” Lipton’s voice floated up, tinged with genuine confusion. “By all accounts, the man’s organs should have liquefied three days ago. He is breathing, but there is no life in him. It is a state of suspended decay.”

“I am not paying you for scientific marvels, Horus.”

Edward’s voice snapped, sharp as a whip. The polished veneer was gone. He sounded afraid.

“I have investors in London waiting for the transfer of the shipping deeds. They will not wait forever. The Duke must die.”

“I cannot accelerate God’s timeline, Lord Edward.”

“You are a physician. Accelerating timelines is what you do best. Give him a heavier dose of the laudanum. Stop his heart.”

“That is murder.”

“That is mercy,” Edward hissed. “And it is a mercy that comes with a thousand pounds for your new clinic in Mayfair. I will visit my cousin tonight, alone. I will say my final goodbyes.”

A pause.

“Ensure that when I leave the room, his suffering is at an end.”

A heavy silence followed. Then Lipton’s voice, tight and compromised.

“As you wish, my lord.”

Norah’s hand stopped moving on the brass.

Her blood ran cold. Edward was not waiting for the arsenic to finish the job.

He was going to smother Alistair tonight.

Norah bolted up the back stairs, ignoring the scolding shout of the housekeeper as she passed the linen closets. She slammed the door to the Duke’s chambers shut behind her and slid the heavy iron bolt into place.

Alistair was sitting in the chair by the window, a stolen book resting on his lap. He looked up, startled by the noise.

“He’s coming tonight,” Norah said, breathless, her chest heaving. She paced the room, running her hands through her hair. “He paid Lipton off. He’s going to visit you alone tonight, and he’s going to make sure you stop breathing.”

Alistair slowly closed the book. The colour drained from his face, leaving him looking like a corpse again.

But his hands did not shake.

“Tonight, we have to leave,” Norah said, grabbing a canvas sack from the wardrobe and stuffing a heavy wool cloak inside. “We have to sneak you down the servant stairs. If we can make it to the stables, I can hitch a cart—”

“I wouldn’t survive the carriage ride to the end of the driveway,” Alistair said flatly.

“You won’t survive the night in this bed.”

“Norah. Stop.”

The command in his voice was absolute. It was not the bark of a tyrant. It was the cold, steady authority of a man who had accepted reality.

Norah froze, the sack dangling from her hand.

“I cannot run,” Alistair said, leaning forward in his chair. “I am too weak, and he has too many men. If we flee, he will declare me mad, hunt us down, and shoot us like dogs in a ditch.”

“Then what do we do?” Norah demanded, her voice cracking with the first hint of real panic.

Alistair looked toward the heavy oak door. His jaw set into a hard, unforgiving line.

“We let him try to kill me.”

Norah stared at him as if he had lost his mind. “He will succeed. He is healthy, and you are eating stale bread to stay alive.”

“He is a coward,” Alistair corrected softly. “Cowards expect their victims to be passive. He expects a dying man — weak and compliant. We will give him exactly what he expects.”

He stood.

It was a slow, deliberate movement — but he did not stumble. The week of stolen food and forced pacing had given him back a fraction of his strength. He walked to the fireplace and picked up the heavy iron poker. He weighed it in his hands. It was solid, blackened by soot, with a sharp, heavy hook at the end.

“You hide in the wardrobe,” Alistair said, turning to face her. “When he comes in, I will play the corpse. He will lean in close to finish it. When his hands are on me, you step out and strike him hard. Not on the head — I want him conscious when I speak to him.”

A pause.

“Take his knees.”